Tragedy and the Common Man

“It has often been held that the lack [of tragedies] is due to a paucity of heroes among us, or else that modern man has had the blood drawn out of his organs of belief by the skepticism of science, and the heroic attack on life cannot feed on an attitude of reserve and circumspection.”

Miller opens his essay by clearly stating the central issue: Tragedies are now seldom written, and the reasons commonly given are a lack of heroes or growing skepticism among people of the modern age. The metaphor of modern man having the “blood drawn out of his organs of belief” lends imagery to the sense of cynicism that Miller sees as pervasive in the post-war era.

“I believe that the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were. On the face of it this ought to be obvious in the light of modern psychiatry, which bases its analysis upon classic formulations, such as Oedipus and Orestes complexes, for instances, which were enacted by royal beings, but which apply to everyone in similar emotional situations.”

Here, Miller both states his thesis, supporting the essay's primary theme of The Common Man as Tragic Hero, and provides his first argument to support it. By evoking these conditions from modern psychiatry, which derive their names from Greek tragic heroes, he appeals to logic and points out that society already accepts the notion that people of high stature can have the same emotional states as common people.

“From Orestes to Hamlet, Medea to Macbeth, the underlying struggle is that of the individual attempting to gain his “rightful” position in his society.”

Miller notes that all tragic heroes possess the same underlying desire to fight for their personal dignity, and by extension tragic stories all deal with the same underlying emotions. By alluding to specific tragic heroes and comparing Greek heroes (Orestes and Medea) to Shakespearean heroes (Hamlet and Macbeth), Miller highlights that this quality of tragic heroes is universal.